› added 2 years ago

95

TIL Major General Orde Wingate, who would later devise and lead the Chindit raids in Burma, once persuaded an Italian commander in Abyssinia to surrender his 12,000 strong force to Wingate's 2000 man force, despite having been ordered by his superiors to cease pursuing the Italians.

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aMR9 TIL: Over the past decade, at least two newborns have died after contracting herpes following an ancient circumcision ritual called ‘metzitzah b’peh’ in which the rabbi draws blood from the penis with his mouth.
v1BGx TIL that Khutulun, the great-great-great granddaughter of Genghis Khan, was a fearsome warrior and a superb wrestler. It was said that she insisted on only marrying a man who could defeat her in wrestling, and that if she won, she would gain a horse from the loser. She accumulated a herd of 10,000.
yQRaJ TIL NASA originally planned to fly moon missions up to Apollo 20, but budget cutbacks ended at Apollo 17 and left 3 Saturn V rockets unused. 2 wound up in museums, and 1 was repurposed to launch the Skylab space station.
aYly TIL that after Thomas Edison ripped off the first film camera from France, he used copyright laws to restrict imports of other cameras to the US. Sometimes he would use hired thugs (the Edison mafia) to violently stop people from using other cameras.
KOgRa TIL the 'ye' in 'ye olde' is pronounced 'the'. In old English, they had a letter for the 'th' sound, þ, which in handwriting looked a lot like the letter 'y' and were often used interchangeably.